BDC Advisors Issues Consumer-Driven Ambulatory Businesses Working Paper

New BDC Working Paper Highlights Challenges Hospitals Face in Consumer-Driven Ambulatory Care Market: Recommends new business strategies to improve quality, lower cost of care, and earn greater financial returns.

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BDC Advisors

Aug 08, 2019, 08:37 ET

MIAMI, Aug. 8, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- A new BDC Working Paper "Building Consumer-Driven Ambulatory Businesses" issued today concludes that health systems risk losing the early advantage they have had in the rapidly growing ambulatory healthcare market, and that they face serious competition from focused, venture-backed companies and insurers who are entering the ambulatory market at scale. Author David G. Anderson, PhD, a Senior Advisor at BDC, discusses several obstacles health systems face in their battle to continue building ambulatory care: (i) their traditional commitment to inpatient care; (ii) fundamental differences in ambulatory and inpatient markets; and (iii) dynamic entrepreneurship and growing access to capital by independent ambulatory providers. Succeeding in ambulatory markets will require health systems to "break the chains tying their inpatient and ambulatory activities together," argues Anderson. Key steps health systems can take are to reorganize ambulatory care to give it greater stature and access to resources, enhance ambulatory customer experiences, develop more flexible pricing strategies, invigorate consumer marketing, promote new product development, and strengthen business development capabilities to execute complex partnerships and alliances with other providers.

Anderson points out that the ambulatory care market has become an entrepreneurial world "full of partnerships, joint ventures and alliances" and that to succeed in this market, health systems will need to recruit ambulatory leaders who are themselves entrepreneurs. He concludes that while pursuing ambulatory business for its own sake could increase market fragmentation, "as long as ambulatory markets are competitive, this strategy could produce improved quality, lower cost of care, and greater financial returns."

ABOUT BDC ADVISORS AND THE AUTHOR

BDC Advisors, LLC is a national healthcare strategy consulting firm that transforms and grows healthcare organizations. Established in 1990, the Firm's services include health enterprise strategy, payer/provider innovation, physician enterprise strategy, organization design and development, and population health management.

David G. Anderson, PhD is a BDC Senior Advisor and led the Firm's Organization Design & Development Practice for over a decade. He was formerly Managing Director at CSC/APM Management Consultants and previously worked at McKinsey Company, where he was principal researcher for the award-winning study of successful companies, "In Search of Excellence." He holds an MBA and PhD in organizational behavior from Stanford and has taught at M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management. He also serves as Executive Director of the Institute for Affordable Care, which he founded in 2018.

For comments or questions: Dave Anderson, [email protected] or 925-352-9462.

SOURCE BDC Advisors